Pay TV services to jump over $100 billion between now and 2015

Market research firm Infonetics says that pay TV has globally hit $240 billion in revenues now and these will drive to $347 billion by 2015

By PETER WHITE

Published: 19 May, 2011

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Market research firm Infonetics says that pay TV has globally hit $240 billion in revenues now and these will drive to $347 billion by 2015. That’s around a 9% compound growth rate, way ahead of the CAGR for pay TV homes, so this report assumes that TV ARPU will continue to rise throughout the emergence of OTT.

Like Rethink, Infonetics adds up the user bases of Cable, Satellite, and IPTV video Services and multiplies them all out by their existing ARPU figures, to reach a global subscriber value.

“We’re seeing continued growth in the pay TV market, driven by providers’ ability to offer voice/video/data service bundles, a broad range of linear and on-demand content, and advanced services, such as multi-room DVR and multi-screen video delivery. Although cable MSOs continue to be challenged by competition from IPTV and satellite operators, the overall market remains robust, despite the attractiveness of over-the-top (OTT) services,” notes Teresa Mastrangelo, directing analyst for video at Infonetics Research.

The growth from 2009 to 2010 was around 11% with IPTV naturally experiencing the strongest revenue growth, up by 45% in 2010. Satellite video services were up just 13% by comparison. Cable makes up by far the largest portion of video service revenue, although growth in the cable segment is slowing.

Infonetics says that DirecTV, with the highest video ARPU, is the global leader for video service revenue – putting it ahead of Comcast despite it having a larger customer footprint at 22.8 million.

The top 20 revenue leaders in pay TV account for 53% of total video services revenue. With more than 22.8 million video service subscribers worldwide, Comcast maintains its lead in the race for subscribers